1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to a digital cable broadcast processing apparatus and a method thereof, and more particularly, to a digital cable broadcast processing apparatus capable of controlling a power supply in accordance with absence and presence of a cable card, and a processing method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A digital cable broadcast system mainly includes a head-end, a digital cable receiver such as an open cable apparatus, and a cable card. A digital cable signal transmitted from the head-end, is interoperable with the digital cable receiver and the cable card which is mounted in the digital cable receiver.
A digital cable signal transmitted from the head-end contains a cable broadcast program for transmission to in-band (InBand), and out-of-band (OOB) data for transmission to out-of-band (OOB). Therefore, a digital cable receiver has a path for processing a cable broadcast program, and a path for processing OOB data. The OOB data contains data for control between the head-end and the digital cable receiver, and additional data related with broadcast programs.
A cable broadcast program or OOB data, being transmitted to the digital cable receiver, is in a scrambled state. Accordingly, the cable broadcast program and OOB data can be provided to the cable card after demodulating. A cable card refers to a POD module (point of deployment module) which descrambles the cable broadcast program or OOB data, and is mounted in the digital cable receiver by a PCMCIA (personal computer memory card international association) interface.
A problem of the conventional digital cable receiver as described above is that power is continuously supplied to blocks such as a tuner and a QPSK modulator, which are associated with the transmission and reception of OOB data, even when the digital cable receiver is in stand-by mode and there is no cable card mounted. This is because of the fact that the digital cable receiver always receives the OOB data. Here, the ‘stand-by mode’ refers to a situation where the power is supplied to the digital cable receiver for the reception of OOB data while the viewer is not actually viewing the broadcast.
As described above, a conventional digital cable receiver consumes power even in the stand-by mode and when there is no cable card mounted. For example, the conventional digital cable receiver consumes approximately 15 W of power during the stand-by mode, while the general digital TV consumes up to 3 W of power during the stand-by mode.